God Mode
"God Mode" is the twenty-second episode of season 2, and overall the forty-fifth produced hour of Person of Interest. It originally aired on May 9, 2013 Synopsis Reese and Finch team up with a group of allies in a race to save the Machine from Root and the mysterious organization Decima, who have both re-emerged with dangerous agendas. As Finch's allies faces off against enemies old and new, the nature of Finch's relationship with former partner Nathan Ingram is revealed along with his original motivation for wanting to save The Machine’s irrelevant numbers. Meanwhile, in her mission to bring Cal Beecher's murderer to justice, Detective Carter finds herself up against the criminal organization known as HR. The episode begins with The Machine reviewing the footage of last week's episode It replays Finch splicing the telephone circuits, so that John can have full administrative access as well as Root. The Machine then relays "Clock Positions" to John as to where to fire his gun. The Machine is assessing potential threats to John and saving him in the process (Something mentioned about the Machine saving Finch's life in while he was in Atlantic City doing a test run. He says :You can't do that again. Your job is to protect everyone, not to protect me. I guess we're going to have to discuss some ground rules.). The Machine does the same with Root. Both parties race to find the Machine, however John is slowed down as the Machine wants John to rescue people from the irrelevant list. Root finds Lawrence Szilard , the man who recruited Daniel Aquino. He was the Project Manager for Northern Lights, responsible for building the space to house the Machine, and assembling it together. He also took a look at the code, and had much the same feeling as Root, that the Machine should be allowed some freedom. Root finds that the Machine has moved itself to prevent tampering by Decima. She blames Harold and as she is going to shoot him, but Samantha Shaw shoots Root and saves Harold. Just then the government men led by Special Counsel and Hersh walk in holding guns. Finch explains that The Machine moved itself, as an act of self-preservation. Finch does not know if the Machine will continue to call both the Government and himself with new numbers or not, believing it will now decide for itself. It has the freedom that Root wanted it to have. Special Counsel tries to get Finch to help find the Machine, or to build a new one, offering carte blanche authority on the matter, but Finch refuses saying that they made false promises to his friend Nathan too, and killed him in the process. Special Counsel allows them to leave. After they go, an unknown woman calls Special Counsel's phone. She asks to talk to Hersh. She then tells Hersh to "Seal the room" to which he says "Yes Ma'am" and shoots everyone including Special Counsel, who does not attempt to escape. Later, Reese and Finch are seen talking about the curent status of the Machine. Finch states that he doesn't know what the Machine will do next, and that continued numbers delivery is uncertain. He also states that he feels responsible for the events that transpired, especially the ones in Reese's life, because of his attempt to insert the new code in the Machine. Reese dismisses it saying: "My life changed when I kept my mouth shut in an airport terminal seven years ago. You lost a friend, you did what you had to do". Then, a payphone starts ringing, indicating that the Machine will still send them the irrelevant numbers. Meanwhile, Hersh is seen talking with a woman in a black town car, reporting what transpired. He says that Research made contact and there is a new number. It's unclear whether he is refering to a new relevant number, or if he somehow knows that John and Finch were contacted. For the first time Hersh is depicted with a yellow square, indicating that he knows about the Machine, which is also the case of the woman. The identity of the woman remains unknown, but it is suggested, that she is the mysterious "Control". (The document header states "Memorandum for Control - Department recruitment status 2012-2013".) The Machine also calls Root, and asks again, in disjointed voices, "Can You Hear Me?" During this same time frame Detective Carter is being interviewed by IA about the shooting of a suspect who was armed when Carter shot him, but whose gun disappeared, presumably taken away by a uniformed officer in the employ of HR. HR and Peter Yogorov attempt to kill Carl Elias, but the attempt is stopped by a masked Detective Carter, who kills Yogorov and frees Elias. Episode Notes * By the end of the episode, four entities have an interest in the Machine: 1) Finch, Reese and their new-found ally Shaw; 2) Special Counsel and the Project; 3) Root and; 4) Greer and Decima Technologies. * Root lost administrative access by the time she arrived at the door, behind which The Machine was installed, at the Hanford facility. The next day, once she is in a mental hospital, she appears to receive a call from the Machine as the episode ends, but it is not clear what that call signifies. * Elias claims to be honorable when he said to Detective Terney "No. You don't get to talk to me. I'm true to what I am. Like my friend Mr. Yogorov here. I killed his father. He kills me. Fair is fair. But you, you're a-- you're an oath breaker. You're a worm." Detective Terney is an oath breaker in the sense he does not follow his sworn duty to "protect and serve". * Hersh said he was trying to resolve two issues before he could rescue Special Counsel:1) Decima Situation 2) ongoing issue with rogue operatives (Root, Executive Assistant to Special Counsel; Shaw, former colleague of Hersh; & Reese) * This episode incorporated a common theme of the stoic acceptance of death. This thread can not only be found in the case of Elias, but also with Special Counsel and Finch. In the case of Special Counsel, he said "fair enough", when Hersh killed him in cold blood. Last but not least, Finch said he wanted Reese to "continue what we had started" if he did not return.*The statement Root made to Finch "I can see for the first time,and you're blind." has two meanings. Literally, Harold has no glasses. Figuratively, Harold does not have access to The Machine. *Special Counsel learns the identity of the "Man Behind the Curtain". More specifically he says of Finch "I always knew there was someone behind Ingram. Like a black hole. Invisible, but powerful." *The Machine was able to move itself to a new undisclosed location in a five-week time span, one node at a time, without going off-line, by assuming Special Counsel's identity. *Finch says the virus that infected the Internet, was based on his source code, would cause the Machine to "evolve" in response to an attack in order to protect itself. He suspected The Machine would be hijacked for nefarious purposes. *Reese gives away ninety percent of his salary. *In academic circles, the following statement made by Szilard concerning the data he saw has a specific meaning: "Just the I/O. The rest was encrypted. But what I saw... it was like a glimpse of the future. Elegant, intuitive. Practically alive." Elegant: simple yet powerful Intuitive: done with skill, but without special planning; In reference to the reduced coding set (fewer lines of source code), involved in creating the I/O (Input/Output) interface. For example, a not so intuitive way to accomplish a task like buying a pack of gum; every little step has to be explained in order to complete the task; get up, walk to door, head straight, pay money, etc. Trivia *There was a character in this episode called Lawrence Szilard (or L.Szilard) . Incidently, there was a nuclear physicist by the name of Leo Szilard , who was a contemporary of Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, & Edward Teller, provided the early foundation for atomic bomb research (based on the concept of nuclear fission, the splitting of atoms, in order to release massive amounts of energy). After realization of "the bomb", Leo Szilard spent the rest of his life advocatiing for international arms control, and opposing the militarization of atomic energy use. *Nuclear Reprocessing: Extraction of residual uranium and plutonium from spent fuel rods, used in nuclear power plants, in order for it to be reused for other purposes. *The persons affiliated with the Northern Lights project, who died under mysterious circumstances, the incident is reminiscent of the tale of the pyramid builders, who were buried alive after they completed construction of the pharaoh (Egyptian king) tombs, because "dead men tell no tales". Whether it actually happened is another matter entirely. *In this episode, three potential sites were mentioned for the location of the machine: 1) Yucca Mountain in Nevada 2) Hanford, Washington 3) Comanche Peak, Texas. The backstory for these three sites are: Yucca Mountain: Long-term storage of radioactive waste Hanford Nuclear Reservation:Manufactured plutonium used in the early research of atomic weapons at Los Alamos, as well the Fat Man/Little boy bombs dropped on Japan Comanche Peak: Nuclear Power Plant *NLP: Natural Language Processing *HMT:Hybrid-Machine Translation *The combination to the wall safe in The Library is 02-24-05 which is the first day The Machine went online and the date that Harold Finch explained to Nathan Ingram how The Machine works. *Producers Greg Plageman and Jonathan Nolan along with the director of this episode, Richard J. Lewis, make a cameo as orderlies and patient respectively when Root walks down the hallway in the asylum. References Dramatic Elements *The beginning of the episode began with a variation of the In medias res techique, that is it begins with the ending of a flashback. Finch comes into view with crutches stating "Did you know?" Quotes Promo Sneek Peaks Category:Season 2 Category:Episodes